Dear Benji

Dear Benji,

I know it’s been two years since we’ve spoken, but I needed to write you today. I have something to tell you. Seth and I were married yesterday. I thought you would like to know.

We were married at the large cathedral on Third Street. Do you remember it? Seth was so excited about it being available on our date – he thought it was just the perfect church for our wedding – I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that we once planned on having our wedding there. The cathedral wasn’t the only thing that reminded me of you these last few months. I tried so hard to make sure nothing would remind me of you on my wedding day that I was reminded of you even more. I had to stop and remember the plans that we once made so I could make different plans this time. I might as well have had the wedding that we once envisioned.

It was a lovely ceremony. The church was decorated beautifully with white flowers – lilies, carnations, and roses adorned the pews and the pillars (remember Dawn? She was my wedding coordinator and she did a marvelous job), and gardenias were arranged throughout giving the chapel a fragrantly delicious scent. Of course you remember that gardenias are my favorite flower. I still have that bottle of perfume you once gave me.

My bridesmaids were not at all embarrassed in their pale pink gowns. They looked elegant and sophisticated, not like the frou-frou bunnies at Charlotte’s wedding. In fact, I used her wedding as an example of what not to make my bridesmaids wear. The groomsmen, Seth’s brothers, also looked very classy in their black tuxes and grey cummerbunds. Aunt Margaret was there, too, crying the whole time, even at the reception. Miraculously, she was able to catch the bouquet through her tears. What she’ll do with it I don’t know. Every time a man asks her for a date she’s so grateful she cries and of course, that scares them off. She hasn’t had a “beau” since 1973 and it’s not likely she’ll have one again.

Oh, and guess what happened? Crystal got drunk at the reception and was picking up on every guy there – even the married ones! Not really a surprise, is it? She always has been fond of partying and boys. Now she probably won’t ever get married because she’ll never be able to settle on just one man. At least she’ll have offers.

My father walked me down the aisle. When we used to talk about getting married we thought maybe Uncle Paul would walk me down the aisle. Who would have known that my dad and I could ever bridge the gap between us and have a relationship again? You always tried to get me to talk to him and I always refused. But it’s because of you that I finally forgave him and now we are working hard to forge a bond.

I love Seth with all my heart and I know that marrying him was the right thing and I know we’ll be very happy together. But as I was standing there at the front of the church about to say I do, I couldn’t help but look out into the congregation and search for you. I knew you wouldn’t be there, but still I looked. I used to miss you so much I couldn’t breathe. Since falling in love with Seth that happens less and less, but the wedding just brought back such a rush of memories. I’m sure they will fade as I live my life with Seth and we have children and grandchildren and make our own wonderful memories together. That’s why I had to write you this letter. I just had to say goodbye.

I don’t know if you can get letters where you are. I’ll leave this letter here on your grave just in case. Maybe the words will reach you in Heaven – or maybe you don’t need words to know what’s in my heart. I’ll always love you, Benji. But I need to move on now.

Love always,

K

An Unpleasant Task

I love animals. All animals, big or small, exotic or domestic. If I had a bigger yard, say a ranch with 100 acres, I would have four dogs instead of two, and I’d add a couple of horses, cows, and pigs to the mix. All as pets of course. While I enjoy a good steak and like bacon with my eggs I don’t think I could actually eat the animals I’ve lived with.

I wish I could be with animals all the time. I got my Bachelor’s in psychology and my Master’s in Education. The only animals I work with on a daily basis are of the teen variety. That’s why I was so excited when my friend Kathy told me that a volunteer was needed to work with the penguins at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “I’ll do it,” I shouted. And two weeks later, I was doing it.

Now, you might think working with animals is all fun and cuddly, like I did. But there’s more to volunteering with the penguins than just dancing with the formal attired swimming birds. Turns out that just like humans, these penguins needed to take vitamins. I guess when you take an animal out of its natural environment you have to make up for what it’s losing nutritionally in the form of a little white pill. How do you think you get penguins to take their vitamins? Much the same way as with little kids. Hide it in their food. Once a week that unpleasant task became my job.

Every Friday morning I would show up at the aquarium, log in my volunteer hours, and head down to the penguin exhibit where I would enter a hidden back door and find myself in the ready room. There I would put on a pair of dirty, stinky red waders and wet, black plastic boots. Then I would grab the empty feeding bucket and head out of the ready room and traverse through a labyrinth of hallways and stairwells until I was in the “kitchen.” I headed to the refrigerator and always waiting for me would be a large container filled with smelt. Smelt, for those of you who don’t know, are small silvery fish with a distinctly fishy odor.

After protecting my hands with powdery latex gloves that smelled almost as bad as the fish, I’d take the dead silver smelt over to a sink and wash them, trying not to notice that their eyes were focused on me as if accusing me of taking their lives. After the fish were sufficiently clean for eating (do penguins in the wild wash their dinner before eating, I wonder?), I would take fifteen fish (one for each penguin) out of the bowl and lay them on the counter next to the fifteen vitamins that I had placed there earlier. Holding the fish in one hand I would use my pointer finger to push the head of the fish all the way back until there was a space separating head and body. I would take a vitamin in my other hand and stuff it into the red opening pushing it as far into the fish gullet as I could. It wasn’t always easy. If the vitamin was wet it would be slippery and I would have to battle to get it in my hand and subsequently, the fish. Later, the penguins would be fed by hand and the fifteen vitamin fishy would be the first they received. Unfortunately, volunteers didn’t get to feed the penguins.

You might think that I was bitterly disappointed in finding out the dirty work that I had to do to just to be close to the penguins (another unpleasant task that fell to me was to scrub their penguin poop off the rocks, but that’s another story). You would think wrong. It took only a few weeks before I was able to do this job without gagging and holding the fish delicately as far away as possible. After a while pushing back fish heads and sticking my finger down into their bellies became routine and even fun to talk about. I loved those flightless birds so much that I would have done anything to be close to them. And I did get to be close to them. In fact, one penguin, Dwyer, had a special affinity for me and liked to sit in my lap and…well, that’s another story, as well.

The Bum

He was always standing out in front of the local grocery store with a cart full of his bundled belongings. He was a large man, tall and somehow strong looking, though his torn and threadbare clothing gave him a vulnerable look. He wore a thin green jacket over an old army t-shirt that looked like it had been through World War II.

His beard was long and scruffy, mostly dark gray mingled with white and it reminded me a little of Santa Claus. His hair matched his unkempt beard as it fell to his shoulders, the top covered by a navy blue wool cap that was pulled down low over his ears. His eyes were always halfway closed like he was tired or bored. Or perhaps he was just too ashamed to open them fully and risk seeing something unkind in the eyes of passerby.

For me he was a fixture at Lucky’s, a permanent part of the scenery and I began to look forward to seeing him there. There was something about him that made me love him even though I didn’t even know his name.

Once I put a quarter into the candy machine just inside the store. I came back out and held my small eight year old hand out to him, offering him that candy like it was some kind of wonderful that would take all his cares away. He put up his ageless wrinkled hand, with its huge dirty fingers and smiled. It was the first time I had ever seen his teeth and I found myself surprised because their pristine whiteness didn’t match the rest of him. “No thanks,” he said. “You’ll enjoy that more than I would.”

One day he wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know why or where he went, or if anyone else noticed he was gone. But I noticed and I missed him.

The Adventure

I stood outside the front door re-taking an inventory of the supplies in my Hello Kitty backpack. Rope – check. Flashlight – check. Knife – check. Compass – check. Cookies – check. It didn’t matter that the rope was really yarn and the knife was just the common butter variety found in my mother’s kitchen. The important thing was that a warrior princess never went on an adventure unprepared.

I glanced at the house next door to make sure that my pesky neighbor nemesis wasn’t watching me then I sprinted down the front walk, ran past his house and two others, then stopped as I faced the three story apartment building where my adventure would begin. My task was simple – I merely had to enter the building through the dark, dank dungeon, make my way up to the top floor, then descend by the dilapidated stairs. All without being caught by the evil trolls that inhabited the building.

I took a deep breath, gathering courage, and made my way down the concrete slope that entered the dungeon. I stopped at the bottom and peered into the inky darkness. I could see a light at the far end and I set my sights on it, letting it guide me through. I walked slowly, careful not to wake the sleek, shiny, sleeping dragons that lay in rows on both sides of the dungeon. Halfway through I paused and hesitantly reached out a hand to touch one of the sleeping dragons. He was warm and I knew that meant he had been out rampaging recently. I put my hand back at my side and again concentrated on the light. A couple of times my heart sped up rapidly as I imagined that I heard one of the dragons coming to life, but none of them did and I reached my goal unscathed, breathing sighs of relief.

The light that I had followed led me to an old creaky elevator that went up and down three floors. I had to get in and take it up to the third floor which is where the worst of trolls lived – an old smelly one named Antonio. Antonio would roam the streets of our neighborhood late at night – looking for children to eat no doubt, which was why I never left the house after dark, and what was what made this mission all the more dangerous. The elevator doors opened and I stepped out hesitantly, fighting the urge to turn around and give up. I stood there until I heard the doors close behind me, then I started my way down the corridor. The quiet and the emptiness of the hall bolstered my courage and I made my way more quickly to the old stairwell. As I closed the door of the stairwell behind me I could hear an apartment door open and I knew that it must be Antonio coming out to get me. Normally I would take the stairs carefully, as they were rotting away and likely to give at any time. But with the troll on my heels I dashed down as quickly as I could until I reached the ground floor and then I tumbled through the doorway into the alley outside. I leaned against the door catching my breath with a smile. The first part of my adventure was over – a success.

With the trolls left behind, I then started down the alley. The alley was narrow with apartments and houses flanking each side. Low fences allowed me to look into backyards. I came to a stop next to one of these yards and faced the second part of my mission. I needed to scale the fence and begin a run through five backyards (and, consequently, five more fences to hop), until I reached the end of the street. I had to do this without being noticed. If caught, I was sure to be tortured, but even so I would never reveal what I knew (Of course, the things I knew would only be interesting to other ten year olds).

I climbed over the first fence with furtive glances cast in every direction except the direction I was going, so I never saw the kiddie pool with the kiddies in it until I was standing ankle deep in it. Two naïve toddlers gaped up at me and I quickly knelt to their level with a finger over my mouth. Even I knew that when you met children this age a mother was somewhere very nearby. It crossed my mind to give the children the choice of coming with me, away from the tyranny that they surely lived with, but decided that they would only slow me down. “You never saw me,” I whispered and I reached into my backpack for my cookies. That would only hold their tongues as long as they were full so I wasted no time in getting on my way.

I kept my guard and made my way cautiously to the end, always aware that I could be captured at any time. I scaled the final fence onto a sidewalk at the end of the street. I had completed my mission (although the adventure never ended), winding up down the block from my home. I started my walk back when suddenly from up in a tree I heard, “Whatcha doin’?” I looked up and to my dismay I saw him – my annoying neighbor, my most evil enemy. “Nothing,” I said as I hurried down the street wondering to myself if he would tell on me.